Off to the Air Races!

If you're in Reno and you go to the air races, say hello!

I do not think that word means what you think it means...

While I appreciate positive reviews, I think some people need to look up the meaning of the word 'graphic'. Graphic sex means it is described, in graphic (complete) detail. If the sex isn't described, but is just hinted at, it's not graphic, because there are no details described.
I guess I've gotten rather good at setting off people's imaginations, even though I don't go into detail in most of my stories, that they somehow think I do. So maybe I should be proud of that?

License Statements

As I'm sure a few of you may know, ebooks have licensing statements attached to them, as well as copyright statements. For many years I've used the Smashwords licensing statement, because it was required for you to use it, if you wanted to publish on Smashwords. The reason for the license, at least as I always saw it, was because anyone could quite easily copy your ebook and send it far and wide to everyone. And of course, there are quite a few people who do this. The idea behind the statement is to try and stop that behavior.

Now some will argue that you can take a book and send it around to everyone you know, and that's true, you can. However, you can only send that book to one person at a time. Oh you could try to photocopy it, which is illegal, but that would cost you more than just buying another copy. Also that book will wear out with time. Ebooks don't wear out.

Amazon does have a method by which you can loan ebooks to your friends, one at a time, and it takes it away from you while it does so. Preserving the 'single' identity of each copy. Also, this is part of why ebooks are (at least from me) significantly cheaper than paperbacks. That whole lack of paper that must be bought, printed on, assembled, warehoused, and delivered.

Now, every once in a while I consider re-writing that license statement in my ebooks, I haven't yet because most people don't really pay any attention to it, it's just a legal necessity that I have to follow, and without a lawyer's help, which is expensive, I don't want to screw myself over by changing it. However lately I'm considering making it a little bit clearer. When you buy a copy of one of my ebooks, as far as I'm concerned, you have the ownership of that copy for life (unless you return it of course).

Will I give you the license to pass that right on to others? Sorry, not for 3 or 4 bucks I won't. If you want it to last for that long, buy the paperback. It's printed on high quality paper and odds are it will last a hundred years (maybe more, I don't know) if taken care of. If you look, you'll see my paperbacks are priced lower than comparable paperbacks in the bookstores, and I use better paper.

If you want to loan that book to someone else to read, well Amazon has a process for that and you might want to look at it. Of course if you want to hand your kindle (or whatever you read it on) to someone else, hey I'm fine with that. But if you want to make a -copy- and give or loan that to someone else? That's illegal, and no, I'm not going to give you the right to do that. Again, if you want to pass the book around, spend the couple of extra bucks and buy the paperback. Then you can treat it like a paperback.

Now I realize that there are people who will think I'm being unreasonable over this. I suspect those people also make more money an hour than I do :-P  But you also have to understand that Amazon also has a licensing agreement that you agree to when you purchase an ebook. As far as I know, mine isn't any different than theirs is, and in fact may be a little more liberal.

As for why I'm writing this? Well someone got upset with my licensing agreement. I think they figured that once they bought it, they could give it to whomever they wanted to, I'm not sure. I pointed out the Amazon sharing program, but I haven't heard anything back. Also I'm a bit suspect, because honestly, who reads the copyright and licensing statements in a book? I don't, do you?

Anyways, back to work!

The Hammer Commission is doing rather well

Surprisingly, with the release of A new Hammer Commission book, the first book in the series has actually been going rather well and shot up into the top 100 in the three main categories it is in. Not bad for a book I wrote over three years ago!
While it's in the top 20 in the werewolves / shifter categories, it hasn't gotten much below 80 in the SciFi action and adventure category, moving back and forth quite a bit there. 'The King of Las Vegas' really hasn't seem much more action than it originally got however, but then that isn't a story about the main protagonist, Mark, but a spin off of another character in the series.
If the sales continue, there will be another Hammer Commission book, which would be nice as I already have most of the plot for it anyway, but right now I need to finish the new novel, then a POI book, and now perhaps another Hammer Commission story.

And linky for the old book:

Sad, but very true.

The American News Media Sucks

So yeah, Amazon and guns on covers in advertisments.

Got called by Amazon's advertising department today about my complaint on their killing my ad.

They weren't pleased to be calling me, and while they claim they weren't giving me the brushoff, I'm not so sure. The reason for why it was canceled was pretty much bull. Then again, this 'new' direction that they've been taking for a while is pretty much bull as well. Special snowflakes needing to be protected from pictures that might hurt their fragile psyches.

Whatever. I suspect eventually they'll be policing our covers as well, but not yet at least.

So on a brighter note, my battles over the problems with them changing my categories did not go unrewarded. I changed categories on the book 'The Hammer Commission' which is the book that comes before 'Wolf Killer' and guess what? In only 24 hours the changes went through! Awesome.

Also, Hammer Commission is in the top 100 in two categories. Hopefully that will spread to more as well. I honestly did not expect to see sales on that book as well, but I'm rather glad I am. Now if only I could find the time to actually WRITE this week. All of this stuff going on has really been cutting into my writing time.

Oh, and thanks for your patronage, as always. I do appreciate it very much!
-John

Amazon doesn't like pictures of guns on the covers of books.

So,

There are people at Amazon who do not like the cover of my new book, because the FBI agent on the cover is holding a gun.

I'm not making this up.

If you're thinking of buying it, better hurry up and do it soon. They've already pulled my advertisements for the book, because of the gun on the cover. I wouldn't be surprised if they pull the book next.

http://amzn.to/2aZFnxw

The new book is out: Wolf Killer

I originally wasn't going to publish until tomorrow, so the book would be live on Friday, but for other reasons (I had to have the asin number and URL for a Saturday advert) I published last night and the book is now live on Amazon:

http://amzn.to/2bgvr7n

Go check it out, I hope you like it. This is the next book in the Hammer Commission universe, it follows Mark as he gets loaned out to the FBI, and picks up after the first book in the series. You do not have to have read any of the other books in the series to read this one. They all stand on their own.

Haven't posted in a couple of weeks

Hi all, Just noticed I hadn't posted in almost two weeks. Not a lot has been going on, the new novel is out to the beta readers, I really need to come up with a title for it. Come Monday I'll start doing a grammar edit on it, maybe even see if I should send it out to my editor. I really do wish someone made a program that actually could fix grammar (I believe I have mentioned this here before) but so much of grammar is subjective, and the rules are so loose, that's it not possible for the English language. Which of course is why no body does it.

So, yes, been busy with that, an with a few side projects under a pen name. Now that all of that is out of the way, I need to start working on the next novel, as I've fallen a bit behind. I wanted to be pushing out the fourth novel for the year by this time, instead I'm only pushing out the third. I know I'll get two more done before the end of the year, but I'd sorta hoped to do six this year, and not just five.

Well, the best laid plans, after all, right?

As for what's new? Nothing really, just lots of work. I lowered the prices on all my paperbacks by about a dollar, by pulling them out of 'expanded distribution' which really wasn't giving me any sales. Most of my sales were via Amazon, so by getting rid of that option it allowed me to drop my prices more, to (hopefully) make my paperbacks more appealing to Amazon shoppers. I know I'm not a name author, so I don't want to charge name author prices. By charging significantly less, I figure folks who only read paperbacks are more likely to buy one of mine.

I also need to see about going to more cons and selling stuff there. That would be completely new territory for me, I've never sold stuff at a con before. But I'm thinking that I probably should consider it. I just wish there were more cons near where I live. It's like a cultural wasteland in this town.

So, that's it for me mostly. Just work and more work. Thanks all!

Reviews! Ratings! Please!

Just a semi-annual plea to ask you all once again: If you read one of my stories and enjoyed it, please go and rate it! Better still, if you could write a short review.

Please!

Reviews are the biggest thing you can do, and they really do help sell books. Also, 50 is the magic number on Amazon. Once a book goes past 50 reviews, Amazon starts to help promote it. If ten percent of my readers left positive reviews, I wouldn't have a book with less than a hundred reviews, and some would have over a thousand.

So please, when you finish an ebook, click through to the rating page and put in a rating. If you enjoyed it, I'd ask that you give it a 4 or 5 star review (for some reason, Amazon considers 3 stars a negative review, strange I know).

Thanks!
-John (your hungry author).

Zombies!

Not me of course, I'm not really into the whole zombie genre. But a friend of mine, Mark Wandrey, who writes Science Fiction, got  this sudden urge to write a zombie story a while back. It was kind of interesting to hear him talking about it, and he was asking everyone lots of questions on lots of different technical stuff, you could tell there was a lot of research going on.

So, I bought a copy and read it. Now like I said, I'm not really into the Zombie genre, but I'm actually liking this book. I think part of that is because it's a SciFi based story, it's not horror, so things are explained, science is done, you learn not only about the how and the why of the Zombies (and it's complicated) but you learn about a lot of other things in the process.

Also, the story is a very good reflection of our current society, and all that's going on in it. And there are multiple story lines, this isn't all about one person in one place, we are following a number of people and seeing both the realizations and the issues that they have to face.

So, if you're a fan of the Zombie genre or Zombie stories in general, I'd say to check it out. If you're not, you might want to download the sample anyway, and give it a look. I'm pretty sure its on all of the booksellers out there, but here's the Amazon link, it's called 'A Time to Die':

Never Take Your Eyes Off the Threat

This is something I learned a long time ago, and which became vital in my days of big cat raising and training. You never look away, you never take your eyes off the threat, you never get distracted. I'm not sure if I learned it when I became a scuba diver, or if it was later in the air force when flying. It might have been sooner than that even, but in the world of animal training, especially wild carnivores, it's vital.

So I have a problem, at times, with plot points in stories and shows where the main character, or maybe a not so main character, gets distracted away from the 'bad <whatever>' at a particular point. Because I don't get distracted, I know where the 'threat' of imminent harm is, and I keep my eyes on it. If I have to maneuver to keep my eyes on two things I will, but I do maintain an awareness of what's going on around me, because what my try to distract me, may also spook or distract that which I'm dealing with. Because you never want to get tunnel vision either. You don't have to focus all of your attention on the 'threat, to still see it, after all. Because anything in your field of vision is still in your vision.

A friend of mine always used to unfocus his eyes when in judo competitions or sparring, so he never focused on a specific aspect of his opponent, instead allowing him to see all of the opponent at once so he could react to all of it, and not be distracted by a hand faint, or a head fake. It's really a very worthwhile technique to practice.

Now, for the average person, yes, I can see them being easily distracted, not paying attention to things around them that are supposed to be important (like say their children :-6 ), but for a trained professional? Well, not if their training was really any good. It's like that bit you see in fake fights in movies and stuff where the one guy turns his back on the other in a fight. Yeah, that doesn't happen, you never turn your back, even when doing any kind of a spinning attack in martial arts, you turn your head as you spin, to keep your eyes on your opponent as long as possible.

Of course it's always easier to write a hero who makes lots of simple mistakes, and it's a lot harder to write someone who doesn't. Because then the mistakes have to be a lot more believable.

Anyway, back to work.